THE LAND OF PRESTER JOHN. 165 by the sovereigns of Europe. They further stated that, at the death of the King of Benin, his successor was required to send ambassadors with presents to Ogané, who confirmed him in his kingdom, and received in return a staff and a brazen helmet, for a sceptre and crown, and also a brass cross for the neck, without which ensigns of his dignity the king would not be regarded as their lawful sovereign by the people. This Ogané, it was stated, was invisible, a silk curtain being always suspended before him; and, when the ambassadors were about to retire, a foot was protruded from the curtain, to which they paid homage, and upon their departure they were presented with small crosses. As a specimen of the tales extant of the exploits of Prester John, we are told that, when the Mongol army marched against the Christians of the 'greater India,' of which he was king, he caused a number of hollow copper figures to be made, resembling men, which were stuffed with combustibles and set upon horses, each having a man behind on the horse, with a pair of bellows to stir up the fire. At the first onset of the battle, these mounted figures were sent forward to the charge; the men who rode behind them set fire to the combustibles, and then blew strongly with the bellows; immediately the Mongol men and horses were burnt with fire, and the air was darkened with smoke. Then the Indians fell upon the Mongols, who were thrown into confusion by this new mode of warfare, and routed them with great slaughter.' King John despatched two ambassadors, Pedro de Covillan and Alfonso de Payer, to the Court of Prester John, by way of Alexandria and Aden, where they parted; the latter proceeded to Abyssinia, and De Covillan journeyed to India, and crossing the Indian Ocean, arrived at Sofala on the African coast, in lat. 20° 11′ S., whence he made his way to Cairo. Here,learning of the murder of his coadjutor on the road to Abyssinia, he wrote to his sovereign acquainting him with his discoveries, and asserting that a short passage might be found round Africa to the Indies, and himself proceeded to Abyssinia, where the king, Alexander, received him well. Unfortunately this prince died suddenly, and his successor, called Mahee, refused him leave to return home, and kept him a prisoner at his court, where he remained until the year 1520, when he was seen by Don Roderigo de Lima, who came thither as envoy from the Portuguese king. J. A. Mandelsloe, who voyaged to the East Indies in 1639, says a fort was built on the island of Argoin, on the Senegal coast, in 1461, and, in the same year, King Alfonso farmed it out to Ferdinand Gomez, on condition that he should be obliged to discover every year a hundred leagues of the coast, by which means the Portuguese had, in 1497, discovered the isles of Fernando del Po, St. Thomas, Bueno, and Del Principe, and the Cape of St. Katherine's.' In 1481, John II., on his accession to the throne, sent Diego d'Azambuja, who, on the 19th of January, 1482, discovered Elmina, or Mina, near Cape Coast Castle, which received its name. from the quantity of gold found there. At Elmina the Portuguese built a fort. In 1484, John sent Diego Cam and Juan Alfonso d'Avero, the former of whom doubled Capes Lopez and St. Catherine, and entered the mouth of the river Congo, called the Zaire by the Portuguese. Of this river, which has only recently been explored from its source by Mr. H. M. Stanley, Mandelsloe says, 'It is beyond all question the largest river in all Africa, for being joined with the rivers Vambo and Barbella as it passes through the country, it is at the mouth at least twenty-eight leagues broad.' King DIAZ DOUBLES THE CAPE. 167 Emanuel sent another squadron to these parts in 1504, but the discovery of the Cape route to the Indies, and the superior riches of these countries, tended to divert attention from African exploration. D'Avero discovered the kingdom of Benny, or Benin, and visited, says Mandelsloe, the city of Angatoe, twelve leagues from the sea, and somewhat further in the country, upon the river called Rio Formosa by the Portuguese, its capital city bearing the same name as the kingdom.' In August, 1486, the famous navigator, Bartholomew Diaz, sailed from Lisbon with two vessels, and after discovering about a thousand miles of unknown coast line, along which he set up stone crosses, with the arms of Portugal, and quelling a mutiny of his crew who wished to turn back, at length rounded the most southern promontory of Africa, which, in consequence of the storms and tempests he experienced, he called the stormy cape (Cabo Tormantoso). The King of Portugal, however, by a happy inspiration, renamed it the Cape of Good Hope (Cabo del Buono Esperanza) in order that future navigators might not be discouraged at the inauspicious title given by Diaz, who himself found a watery grave off that famous promontory. Camoens, in his 'Lusiad,' represents the awful Cape calling down vengeance on the heads of the seamen : 'Who passed the bounds which jealous Nature drew And the great poet speaks of the fate of the discoverer in the lines: 'Then he who first my secret reign descried, A naked corse, wide floating o'er the tide, Diaz's great discovery was soon to bear fruit, which has revolutionised the relations between East and West, and, more than any single event, conduced to increase the power and influence of England. CHAPTER VIII. Survey of European Intercourse with, and Knowledge of, India, from the time of Alexander the Great to the Landing of De Gama at Calicut. It is supposed by many that India was the country from which the Phoenician pilots of King Solomon's fleets brought gold and silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks,' inasmuch as the original designations of these various importations are not Hebrew but Sanscrit. The earliest fact which Herodotus has recorded respecting the intercourse of Indians with other nations, is the conquest of the western part of Hindostan by Darius I.; but the sway of the Persians over that country was of brief duration, and with the conquest of Darius III. by Alexander, and the death of that prince, in the year 330 B.C., the Persian Empire ceased. To Alexanderwho proceeded to the banks of the Hyphasis, now known as the Sutlej, and by the natives called the Ghurra, whence he was compelled to retrace his steps owing to the discontent of his troops-is due the commencement of that Indian trade, which has subsequently proved of such vast importance to Europe. The Macedonian conqueror founded Akra (Akron of the Greeks), Nicæa and Bucephalia on the Hydaspes (Jhelum) and other cities, and proceeded down the Jhelum to Mooltan where he was wounded when storming the place. We have described how he commissioned Næarchus to survey MEGASTHENES' VISIT TO INDIA. 169 the coasts from the mouth of the Indus to that of the Shatt-ul-Arab, thus opening a communication with India both by land and sea, so that the treasures of the country might be carried through the Persian Gulf into the interior of his Asiatic dominions, while by the Red Sea they might be conveyed to Alexandria. But the untimely death of this great warrior and sagacious monarch suddenly arrested the prosecution of these grand conceptions. The development of the plans of Alexander was not lost sight of under the enlightened government of the Ptolemies. Strabo, who wrote shortly before the commencement of the Christian era, also states that some, though few, of the traders from the Red Sea had reached the Ganges. The first European to visit India after Alexander's expedition was probably Megasthenes, who was sent by Seleucus, one of his successors, to negotiate a peace with Sandracottus after he himself withdrew from India to encounter his rival Antigonus. Megasthenes dwelt for several years in the city of Palibothra,* supposed to have occupied the site of the modern Patna, and wrote an account of the country, to which, it is asserted, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, and Arrian are indebted. Attempts have been made to identify the places mentioned in the voyage of Næarchus, by Arrian (see Gronov edition). Moghu, or Moghunah, situated in the bay between Ras Bostanah and Ras Yarid, on the Persian shore, and formerly a station of the Indian Navy, was called Sidodone. Ras Yarid is called by Niebuhr, Rasel-Jerd, or Baldhead. Many other places in the Persian *This is the name of a city mentioned in the semi-mythical voyage of Jambulus, though it can scarcely be the same, unless the identification of the island mentioned therein with the Maldives or Ceylon is incorrect. |